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Revision as of 16:20, 9 March 2009

J. R. R. Tolkien

Messages left at Deor, Ed Fitzgerald, Carcharoth, WP Children's literature, WP England, WP Middle-earth, WP Bio, WP Constructed languages.

Multiple issues, see Misplaced Pages:Featured articles/Cleanup listing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:38, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Also has several images that violate WP:NFCC. Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:07, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, Sandy. I'm going to list the 'cleanup listing' entries here. Calliopejen1, could you expand on the NFCC violations you see here? Could you and others also list any other issues? Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 04:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Summary of 'cleanup listing' concerns

Summary of concerns about the J. R. R. Tolkien article from Misplaced Pages:Featured articles/Cleanup listing

• The listing is based on a database snapshot of 6 March 2009.
• 6 cleanup categories assigned, but it is actually seven (the Jan 2009 seems missing from the actual 'cleanup list' page): three from January 2009, and the MEfact template piggybacks on the fact template, so it duplicates the "October 2007" entry. All seven template-flaged problems listed below.
  • "Articles with unsourced statements (Oct 2007, Mar 2008, May 2008, Jan 2009), Tolkien articles with unsourced statements, Misplaced Pages articles needing clarification (Feb 2009)"
    • January 2009: "He lived there in the shadow of Perrott's Folly and the Victorian tower of Edgbaston Waterworks, which may have influenced the images of the dark towers within his works."
      • Multiple sources mention this. Am trying to find the best one, and to use the best wording here to indicate that it is (as most of these things are) merely speculation, if persistent and persuasive. If speculation persists in the literature (to the extent that it is used in tourist guides and has become part of the "legend"), can it still be included, with wording to that effect, or is it original research to say that? Might be moot, as I think I can even find sources that confirm that. Carcharoth (talk) 05:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
        • Robert Blackham's The Roots of Tolkien's Middle-earth describes these two towers (and another one) in great detail, but is non-committal, saying only "the two towers are locally believed to be Minas Morgul and Minas Tirith". Presumably the local tourist websites aren't acceptable sources for this (see the articles on the towers themselves). Will keep looking. Carcharoth (talk) 06:43, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
    • January 2009: "Another strong influence was the romantic medievalist paintings of Edward Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has a large and world-renowned collection of works and had put it on free public display from around 1908."
      • Used this source - hope that is OK. Does the bit about the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery having a collection on free display from 1908 need sourcing? Carcharoth (talk) 04:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
    • May 2008: "Tolkien also may have felt jealous about a woman's intrusion into their close friendship, just as Edith Tolkien had felt jealous of Lewis' intrusion into her marriage."
      • This looks dubious to me. I've seen speculation about Edith's attitude towards Lewis, but not the reverse. Will have to check this. 04:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC) Oops. Misread this entirely. I thought it was talking about Tolkien's attitude towards his own wife, but I see it is about Tolkien's attitude towards Lewis's wife. Ugh. I've just checked this in Carpenter's biography, and the whole passage:

        "Tolkien felt that Lewis expected his friends to pay court to her, even though as a bachelor in the thirties, Lewis had often ignored the fact that his friends had wives to go home to. Tolkien also may have felt jealous about a woman's intrusion into their close friendship, just as Edith Tolkien had felt jealous of Lewis' intrusion into her marriage." - from the Misplaced Pages article J. R. R. Tolkien, 09/03/2009

        is a very close paraphrase of Carpenter's biography (page 237). It needs rewriting. The passage from Carpenter is as follows:

        "...he and Lewis might conceivably have preserved something of their old friendship had not Tolkien been puzzled and even angered by Lewis's marriage to Joy Davidman Some of his feelings may be explained by the fact that she had been divorced from her first husband before she married Lewis, some by resentment that of Lewis's expectation that his friends should pay court to his new wife - whereas in the thirties Lewis, very much the bachelor, had liked to ignore the fact that his friends had wives to go home to. But there was more to it than that. It was almost as if Tolkien felt betrayed by the marriage, resented the intrusion of a woman into his friendship with Lewis - just as Edith had resented Lewis's intrusion into her marriage. Ironically it was Edith who became friends with Joy Davidman." - J. R. R. Tolkien - a biography (Carpenter, 1977)

        This adequately sources what was being said here, but the question now is finding suitable wording without plagiarising or engaging in inappropriate close paraphrasing. I'll try and do that at some point. The whole article will need going over with a fine toothcomb for similar instances where the text may need rewriting. Carcharoth (talk) 06:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
    • January 2009: "...and received the insignia of the Order at Buckingham Palace on 28 March 1972."
      • Not sure what is being queried here. If it is the date, that is trivial to source (it is in 'Letters'). If it is the use of the word "insignia", I think that is standard phrasing. I've sourced this in the article to Letters number 334, where the editorial note says "Tolkien received the CBE at Buckingham Palace on 28 March 1972. ". Carcharoth (talk) 05:09, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
    • March 2008: "Use of religious references was frequently a subject of disagreement between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, whose work is often overtly allegorical."
    • ME-fact, October 2007: "However, guided by an intense hatred of their past work, Tolkien expressly forbade that The Walt Disney Company should ever become involved in any future productions."
      • I thought this one would be easy to deal with, but the "Disney veto" is actually in Letter 13 from 1937, and refers to The Hobbit, while the article text is part of a section on the LotR film proposals being vetted by Tolkien in 1958 (the proposals by Zimmerman). It is entirely possible thought that Tolkien said something specific in the 1950s as well, so I will keep looking here. Carcharoth (talk) 07:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
    • Clarifyme, February 2009: "Characters in The Lord of the Rings such as Frodo, Treebeard, and Elrond make noticeably Boethian remarks. <!-- what/how are noticeably Boethian remarks? Example? -->"

In addition to the above, I've looked through for HTML comments (like the Boethian one above), and found the following that flag up potential concerns (some are just explanatory notes that maybe should be explicit, but leaving those for now):

• Many<!-- Many what ?? -->have commented on a number of potential parallels between the Middle-earth saga and events in Tolkien's lifetime.
• Found one "unformatted citations and cite needed tags in the article" comment.
• Four bot-generated titles are present. Presumably FAC standards require bot-generated titles to be manually checked? Should a future version of the 'cleanup list' look for and list the "bot-generated" tags for FA articles?

I also searched for and checked all the templates in use. The above seem to be all the issues that have been noted. More issues may have been raised on the talk page and in its archives, and other issues not mentioned so far may be raised here, but the above is a start. I can probably source all the above if no-one gets to it before me. That should leave only the NFCC concerns, and hopefully Calliopejen1 (or someone else) will start a new section on this. Carcharoth (talk) 04:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Unresolved talk page issues

There are only a few unresolved issues currently on the talk page.

• Mantyxc felt Tolkien's religion should be listed in the infobox. There was no response or apparent action.

  I've replied in this thread on the talk page. Pi zero (talk) 12:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

• 92.229.172.12 mentioned a contradiction between the English and German versions over the etymology of Tolkien's name, which may indicate the English version is incorrect. Again, no response or action.
• Darth Predator complained that the last sentence about Wagner's influence on Tolkien's writing did not reflect the source, following up on a similar earlier concern. This seems confusing, as that sentence is apparently unsourced, and has been since it was added in July 2008 by PauloIapetus. But I think the paragraph would benefit from being rewritten anyway, and certainly the citations need reformatting.
• Calliopejen1 raised concerns about NFCC violations in August 2008; two people disagreed. Given Calliopejen1's comment above, this may not have been resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

I haven't looked through the archives yet. -- Avenue (talk) 10:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

NFCC issues

This article uses six or more (depending on how you count them) non-free images. This is an article about a writer, not an artist, not a model. He is not known for his visual work or for his appearance. We should be able to give readers a clear understanding of JRR Tolkien without so many non-free images. I have no problem with one image in the infobox to show what he looked like. The non-free images that seem marginal are:

• File:Jrrt 1972 tree.jpg - this one is purely decorative. He is standing by a tree. We already know what he looks like from the non-free infobox image. Yes, it is the last known photo of him. But there is a last known photo of practically everyone in the world- this alone cannot justify its inclusion.
• File:Jrrt 1905.jpg - yes, this dates to 1905 but appears not to have been published until 1977, making it nonfree. readers can understand tolkien perfectly well without seeing a childhood photo of him.
• File:Jrrt 1911.jpg - same issue as above.
• File:Tolkien 1916.jpg - even though marked free, appears not to have been published until 1992? more research is needed here, or removal. not necessary to see a photo of him in uniform to understand his military service.
• File:JRRT logo.svg - logo. not sure really of the value of this. i could be convinced that this one should stay in the article, but the problem here is mostly cumulative (this is the sixth nonfree image the reader encounters)
• File:Jrrt lotr cover design.jpg - three nonfree images in one. the article does not discuss the design of these covers at all. even if it did, one illustrative example (rather than three) would probably suffice. Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the infobox image (File:Jrrt 1972 pipe.jpg) also violates WP:NFCC because it does not identify the copyright holder. Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)